


Behold the Gift of a Distant Sun

by ohmyohpioneer



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2735033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyohpioneer/pseuds/ohmyohpioneer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma is trapped by Elsa in her out-of-control ice magic, and there is no way out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behold the Gift of a Distant Sun

Well, she thinks as she watches the two-way radio’s battery light flash orange in warning, she’s had better days.

“Elsa,” she can feel the muscles in her neck begin to tighten, her shoulders pulling in protest against the icy air. “I  _promise_  we will help you find your sister.” 

The young woman hasn’t turned to face her, and Emma’s not entirely sure how she can remain so still against the oppressive cold of the cave.

“You just have to get me out of this cave so I can go to get help.”  

It’s like looking at a cornered animal, hunched and gun-shy. But the more Emma speaks, the less calm the air in the snowy cage grows. Creaking, cracking ice creates ribbons and rivers across and up, and all she has gathered is that this woman – this Elsa – is looking for her sister who is lost or taken or –

“Look,” Emma tries again, folds her arms and tries to bury her aching hands under her arms, “we need to move.”

“I  _can’t,_ ” the woman’s response is clouded and wet, and too familiar. “I don’t, I don’t know how to make it  _stop._ ”

And looks like  _this_  is her night. Trapped an ice palace with a frantic, magical, snow woman.  _Fantastic._

\--- 

_God_ , how  _stupid_ was she to investigate reports of  _ice_ and sudden  _flurries_  in a leather jacket? (Suddenly her mother’s insistence on gloves and a hat and a scarf and  _you’re going to catch your death_  don’t seem so ridiculous and  _why_  had she insisted she could take care of herself?)

“Please,” her legs hurt and she’s not sure she can stand with the lacing stings in her calf and at her knees and the way they tremble, and sitting -  sitting seems much better, “Can you try?” 

She attempts to quell the shivering of her jaw, the way it clacks, as she watches Elsa raise her hands to a glassy wall, frozen and thick. The determination twisting her mouth, marring her forehead – masking well-concealed  _fear_ – is so like Emma’s own clumsy application of magic it is suddenly obvious that they are hopelessly, uselessly  _trapped_.

When Elsa’s slender fingers curl inward, when she deflates in rejection and  _worthlessness_ , Emma can’t even will herself to be angry. She may well freeze to death, but her magic is worthless here, too, and if she can’t save herself, how can she expect anyone else to? 

\---

Ringing, ringing, sharp and  _digging_.

She rubs at her ears while Elsa murmurs softly, seated across from her.

“I can feel it in you, Emma,” her eyes look into her and they are blue – shockingly so – like Killian’s, and not for the first time since she’d been trapped in this glacial fortress, she finds herself thinking about him,  _wishing_ for him. 

This is the first brush with danger she’s had in it feels like eons that he has not been there, that she hasn’t been able to turn, to angle her shoulder at him, to scowl and frown and agree with him. And she knows he is  _warm_ , that he radiates with heat and a rocking peacefulness, that her nose can brush at his collarbone and he will press his lips to her hair and she stills.

She watches as Elsa’s hands clasp her own, but there’s no feeling there, and with Killian at the back of her mind (her enwrapped and twined in his arms), her body ceases its shivering.

“You are  _so_  strong, Emma,” Elsa is fierce, grabbing her, clutching, and it is surreal to watch this woman who so like her try to fight a battle for her. “Your  _magic_  is still strong, even now. Please,  _please_ try.  _Please._ ”

“I think,” she speaks, but the words take minutes, hours to tumble off of her tongue, “I’m going to rest first.”

The tears at the apples of Elsa’s cheeks glisten and shine so bright,  _beautiful_ , Emma wishes she could touch, but – “No, Emma. You mustn’t. Killian, your Killian, is coming. You have to be awake when he gets here.”

“Okay,” she agrees, nods numbly.  The ground is soft, and in a faraway part of her consciousness, she can feel the heat from her skin leeching out, spilling across the snow as she curls with her knees to her chest.

But she won’t close her eyes. Not for long, anyway. Killian will be here soon, and Henry has school on Monday and she can’t be late to pick him up.

\---

Emma thinks she should be scared, should feel some sliver of dread as she stares ahead, too exhausted to  _blink._  But fear is something she doesn’t know in this moment. It is a concept held out and too far (like her slowly blistering fingertips curled up away from the snow, like love, like family).

Distantly, she hears Elsa attempting to get the crackling walkie-talkie to speak.

“You have to help,” even now Elsa is near tears, and Emma wants to move, to stroke her braid and show her that this doesn’t hurt. That there is no fear in this cold. “She’s-she’s  _so cold._ ”

Killian’s frantic tone skitters out of the small device – it’s wavering in volume, dying, dying, the cold draining the battery quickly. (David will have to replace that, she ponders.) 

_“Where are you?”_

His question smells like leather and is scratchy and warm like his cheeks and  _worry_  – that’s what he sounds like. But she can’t reach worry either, and if she could move her lips she would tell him that she is fine – but if he could come, if he could save her this once, that would be okay, too.

\---

His voice, she knows his voice. 

It tilts, it rises and falls and there’s something like panic in it, she thinks. But his words aren’t words. Accented sounds and she tries to place them on him. To put them with his face, but her blood is crawling through her veins, dragging at her skin, and he’s on his way.

Tinny and pitched he says her name, she knows it is her name.  _Swan_. Like the bird, like the aimless movement of carelessness, like being loved and abandoned.

The air in her lungs refuses to go deep, just quick dips and it’s not his voice that is doing it because there is the snow of static then nothing else (silence, ice). He makes her breath short, she knows, he makes her finally  _breathe_ , but now she can’t draw anything in, and she wishes she knew who he was. The voice that makes her breathe. 

\---

“Swan?  _Emma?_ ”

It’s night and he’s standing above her, fire crackling (like static), eating at branches angled against one another on smooth sand. A beach; they’re on the shore, and she can’t piece together how they got here, but it is quiet and the flames are hot, so hot against her face.

He’s looking dazedly at his hand and hook, at the fire, at the roaring sea beyond, and it’s serene here, so like a dream, that she can’t quite understand his confusion.

The sand pillows her head, and she lets the granules slip through her fingers.  _Snow_ , why did she think there was so much  _snow_. And Killian is staring down at her and she is warm and  _happy._

“Come on, pirate,” she giggles. “Make a sand angel with me.”

But his mouth is set, his eyes bright with  _fear_. “Emma, love,” he is stern, too. Deadly serious, and the tide is lapping just feet away. “Listen to me.  _You have to tell me where you are._ ”

“I’m right here, lying down next to you, waiting for you to stop worrying about everything,” she’s getting hotter, and the stars in the sky are starting to dim and flash strangely.

He squats quickly, bringing himself closer to her, and she should be able to breathe him in now, but even the surf is without scent. “No,” he moves as if to touch her ( _she wants him to run his fingers along her jaw, to cradle her head and pull her to him_ ), but halts. “No, Emma. I’m not.”

_Cold._  It smells  _cold._

“Emma,” he calls her attention again, “Your father and I, we were –  _are_  – on our way to you. I’m not - I have no idea what this is, Emma, but you’ve somehow – we’re not at the sea, love. You’re trapped in ice. Do you remember that?”

He’s so gentle, even his speech is cotton and soft, and she remembers the shooting pain, the bitter ache in her ears, and –

“I want,” she swallows, sits up, hotter still.  _God_ , why is she so warm? “I want to be  _here_. With you.”

This time he does reach out, and it’s surprise she reads, as his eyes widen and he makes contact with her chin. “I know, lass.”

“It’s quiet here,” she swallows, and she  _remembers._ There is ice, and it’s  _cold._  “We can just… _be_  here.”

His shock of black hair glints in the starlight, in the glowing fire, as he bows his head. “We can  _be_  anywhere, Swan,” lopsided smile, affectionate head tilt and he is beautiful. “You tell me where, and I am there.”

She wishes, she  _wishes, she wishes._

“Now, love,  _tell me where you are._ ”

And she breathes out a tale of a panicked pursuit, a terrified queen, and ice, cavernous, encroaching ice.

When she blinks back tears, she opens her eyes and there is nothing. It is black and vast and lonely.

\---

Voices.

There is  _noise_  – blooming out, unfolding into a constant too loud  _buzz_ ; then a peaceful warmth, the press of lips on her forehead.

She wants. She wants to open her eyes. But her bones are drowsy and her soul is leaden.

Home.

She can’t see it but she knows.  _Home._

\--- 

He’s next to her when the blackness vanishes, when she comes out of the nothingness.

“Hullo, Swan,” his hand is almost painfully tight around hers. Dark circles and eyes that are rimmed red tell her that his cheerful greeting is more for her benefit than his. (And isn’t that always the case with him?)

“Hey there,” she tries to angle her head toward him, but she finds that she is sore. “I think next time I’ll take that jacket Mary Margaret offers me.”

His chuckle is deep, but edged with sobbed relief. “Indeed.”

“And tell David he needs to replace those walkie-talkie batteries,” she tries, but she knows,  _knows_  how close it was this time.

“Emma. Your magic, love _–“_

But she uses the little energy she can summon to squeeze his hand, “I know. Just – just thank you.”

“That’s not what I meant, Swan.” 

Patient, he is so  _patient_ , and when she tells him, “I know that, too,” she meets his eyes, and it’s like that beach again. (Peace, warmth,  _being._ )

He nods, bites his bottom lip, and it’s not near enough. It’s not near what he deserves, but it is close, and it’s what she has, and it’s more than she’s given  _anyone_.

“Good,” he presses a fierce kiss to her mouth, her cheek, her forehead. “Now get some rest. I’m afraid we have a missing sister to find.”

She’s had worse days.


End file.
